“You have concealed your true self all this time, with such painstaking care — is it truly only to recover the lost territories, or do you harbor intentions of rebellion?” Zhao Dong suddenly asked again.

Han Linfeng raised an eyebrow. “As a descendant of the Holy Virtue Emperor, if I were to make a constant display of that lineage, I would likely forfeit any hope of the Emperor’s favor and bring calamity upon my family. Since this is simply self-preservation, where is the painstaking calculation in it? As for me and Cao Sheng — we were bound together by hot blood and brotherhood from the beginning, with the wish to help the volunteer army find a path to amnesty and legitimacy. But the court chose to drive them to their deaths without mercy, and so I had no choice but to find them a way forward. As for the future — if the court finds it in itself to tolerate them, so much the better. But who would turn to rebellion unless forced to the very end of every road? For now, I wish only to fulfill the Holy Virtue Ancestor’s unfulfilled wish and seize this heaven-given opportunity to recover the Twenty Prefectures. Beyond that, I have no other design.”

Zhao Dong’s blade rested against his throat, yet the final stroke never fell. A war was being fought within him.

How well he knew it himself — if this young man standing before him truly harbored rebel intentions, he would long since have acted like Qiu Zhen, storming cities and turning his blades inward against Wei.

But Han Linfeng had not. In every previous engagement, he had done his best to avoid direct collision with the Wei forces.

Now the two men regarded each other, and looking at the open candor in those young, handsome eyes, Zhao Dong found he simply could not bring the blade down.

Several times the killing intent rose in Zhao Dong’s eyes, and several times he pressed it back down. In the end, with a resounding clang, he flung his own sword to the ground.

He tilted his head back with a long sigh toward the sky, then said: “Go. All those who came with me tonight are men I trust. I will tell them to say nothing — to treat everything they have seen here as though they never knew it.”

Han Linfeng clasped his hands solemnly in salute, yet did not immediately take his leave. He said only: “Though the tide of battle in the north has turned, to truly recover the lost territories will still require the General’s cooperation. Only by driving the Tiefu royal court back ten thousand li can lasting stability on the northern frontier be within reach.”

Zhao Dong had not expected Han Linfeng to press his advantage even after being shown such favor. That he would push his luck further still — actually daring to hope that the Wei imperial army would coordinate with his bandit force — was beyond imagining.

He found himself eyes wide, scanning the ground for the sword he had just thrown down.

Han Linfeng gave a quiet laugh, moved of his own accord to pick the sword up and hand it back to the General, then clasped his hands once more and said: “This night’s generosity — Han will carry it in his heart. I will not fail the General’s hopes. Together we will accomplish something worthy on this frontier.”

With that, he swung himself into the saddle and rode off with his men to meet the reinforcements galloping in.

Zhao Dong watched Han Linfeng’s retreating figure, and felt something in his chest release and settle. He had not expected this — that having uncovered Han Linfeng’s secret, he would handle it so lightly, and that his heart would feel so unencumbered, so clear.

It was as though, after a very long time, he had at last done something he had actually wanted to do.

As for Han Linfeng — this time he truly did return to the Wang household in Liang Zhou.

Luoyun had long grown accustomed to his late returns, and had already arranged things with him beforehand: when he came back late, he was to use the rear gate through which the household’s vegetable deliveries were received. She had set up a gatekeeper’s room at the rear entrance. The path from there to her courtyard was also shorter.

This way, even when Han Linfeng returned in the dead of night, he need not disturb the entire household.

When Han Linfeng came hurrying back, he was already feeling the weight of exhaustion through every limb — yet the moment he saw the beauty in the lamplight, her long hair loose about her shoulders, her face bare of any powder, leaning at the doorway, all the fatigue in his heart dissolved in an instant.

Luoyun said softly: “Why are you back so late again? His Majesty has not issued another marriage alliance edict, has he?”

Han Linfeng put his arm around her slender shoulders and said: “The only unmarried one in our household now is Han Xiao. If His Majesty sends him off in a marriage alliance, I for one would not stand in the way. Let him bring his sour verses along and recite the Tiefu into a stupor.”

Hearing this, Luoyun immediately thought of her young brother-in-law’s remarkable talent for steering any casual conversation — no matter the subject — toward music, chess, calligraphy, or painting, and could not help giving a light laugh.

Han Linfeng had not yet eaten. It so happened that two chickens had been sent from the farm that day, and a rich broth had been simmering, fragrant and deep. With mushrooms and greens added, and rice soaked into the broth, it would be just right.

Luoyun watched him eat with an urgency that told her he had been keeping unsuitable hours, and quickly peeled two braised eggs and added them to his bowl.

When Han Linfeng finished, she wiped his face clean for him. Han Linfeng breathed in the faint fragrance rising from her and, unable to help himself, lowered his head to press a kiss to her cheek.

Luoyun giggled and twisted away from him, running her fingers over the new stubble on his chin. “All across the northern prefectures and counties now, people are telling stories of the Iron-Masked battle commander. The storytellers say he must be a man of beauty as striking as the Prince of Lanling — likely so insufficiently imposing in appearance that he could not overawe his enemies, which is why he conceals his face behind the iron mask. Quite a few of the girls who go to hear those tales have gone utterly smitten, crying out that if they are to marry anyone, it must be a true hero and man of valor like that. And who among them could know that this great hero clings and fusses like a nursing infant — oh!”

She had not yet finished her teasing before Han Linfeng had already swept her up in his arms. “If you hadn’t brought it up, I would never have noticed I hadn’t eaten my fill. Since that is so, you had better feed me properly.”

In the sound of their laughter, the bed curtains drifted slowly down, rippling outward in soft, spreading waves.

Though they were no longer newlyweds, after each extended period of separation this man seemed to know no satiation — like some ancient, untamed force unleashed.

When it was over at last, Luoyun’s forehead was damp with fine perspiration, yet their time together was always so brief that even when she was tired, she could not bear to let sleep take her.

Because before dawn the next day, this man would slip away quietly, without even time to say: come home safe.

And so in the deep of the night, even after the candle was snuffed, the two of them would go on talking for a little while longer.

Luoyun brought up her recent purchase of ships to facilitate the procurement of fragrant materials. Han Linfeng said lazily: “It feels to me like you are preparing for rain before the clouds arrive — getting a means of escape ready for the future.”

Luoyun admitted it openly: “There is a little of that intention, yes. These are ocean-going vessels — capable of sailing through storms and navigating deep waters on long voyages without any trouble. When one has a way out kept in reserve, one can act without restraint in all other things. Though when I was purchasing the ships, that wandering god of wealth heard of it somehow, and sent someone to say he wished to assist me — which I politely declined.”

When she spoke with Han Linfeng, the barest sketch was always enough. He could grasp the full depth of what she meant without needing everything spelled out.

This time was no different. Hearing her opening words, Han Linfeng understood her meaning and completed the thought: “Your caution is well placed.”

That You Shanyue — as the master of a money house, every coin he put out accrued interest. Whatever the terms of repayment in future, he would always bleed a person dry and leave nothing behind.

And his network of contacts was vast. Throughout the court, at almost every level, he had ears and eyes planted.

Just a few days prior, You Shanyue had written him a letter. Every line of it implied, in veiled terms, that he should lead his troops to the capital at the earliest opportunity, because something was likely about to change within the palace. If he could move ahead of everyone else, victory would be assured.

Hearing Han Linfeng say this, Luoyun felt a faint unease stir within her, and probed carefully: “If You Shanyue says so, he must have heard something concrete. What do you intend to do?”

Han Linfeng said with quiet composure: “The northern campaign is at a critical juncture. If I were to suddenly lead troops into the capital at this moment, what would set me apart from the likes of Qiu Zhen?”

Luoyun understood his meaning. For the sake of the dream of his youth — the dream of reclaiming his homeland — Han Linfeng had no intention of abandoning his course halfway on account of You Shanyue’s conjectures.

Then he also told Luoyun about Zhao Dong having seen through his identity. Luoyun was so startled she sat up, held her breath, and asked: “Would he — would he report you?”

Han Linfeng pulled her back into his arms with one easy motion and said composedly: “Given the man’s character, he probably will not. But I do find myself hoping that what You Shanyue described in his letter is true. If it is, the pressure on General Zhao will ease, and things on my end will also proceed more smoothly.”

As it turned out, You Shanyue’s wealth reached across the entire realm, and his intelligence was rarely mere rumor.

For surprises from the capital came one after another in rapid succession, and every person of rank and power would soon find themselves with no attention left to spare for the frontier.

The upheaval in the capital had its origins in the gathering and agitation of Yan County’s disaster-stricken refugees who had flooded into the city.

In ordinary famine years, when local officials embezzled the relief funds and grain, disgruntled refugees would sometimes come to the capital — if someone stepped forward to lead them — to beat the drum of grievance and file their complaints at court. This was nothing unusual to the capital’s officials. But this time, the tide of people pouring in from Yan County and the surrounding districts was unusually fierce, and it appeared that someone had been supplying these refugees with strategy and counsel, stirring them to intercept the imperial procession along the road on a day when the Emperor was leaving the palace to offer incense at the Imperial Temple.

This band of refugees was audacious enough. They actually gathered openly in the capital’s main avenue, bearing petitions detailing, point by point, the Ninth Prince’s indulgence of his subordinates’ corruption and lawbreaking, along with scrolls bearing the seals and marks of tens of thousands of petitioners from dozens of townships, and knelt to present their plea.

Emperor Wei Hui had not been in good health for some time, and this journey to the Imperial Temple to offer incense was itself partly an act of praying for his own welfare. He had not expected to walk out of the palace gates and encounter this spectacle. It was deeply inauspicious — and for fear of some further mishap, the visit to the temple was abandoned entirely.

The Emperor could only summon the Ninth Prince with a darkened face and demand to know whether he had truly failed to address the mess in Yan County.

Prince Rui was of course well aware of how great an impact this crowd of refugees rioting in the streets would have on his prospects at this critical moment when the naming of an heir was imminent.

After all, for the Emperor to formally designate an heir in the face of this seething public resentment would be difficult to justify before the assembled officials.

But the Ninth Prince also understood perfectly well that without someone working behind the scenes to incite and assist them, these refugees could never have entered the city gates in the first place. The guards now stationed at every gate were all the Emperor’s own people — yet some among them had been bribed, and those refugees had been let in through a back channel.

The most urgent thing now was to get these refugees out of the city. Yet beyond the walls, more and more refugees were pressing in from all directions.

When people have no food to eat, it matters little to them whether you are emperor or prince — either way, they are facing death. Coming to the capital to make a scene at least earned them a bowl of thin porridge. What did they have to fear?

The refugees outside the city multiplied by the day, until even the Emperor felt uneasy, and promptly issued an edict dispatching troops to suppress the gathering, agitated vagrants.

The troops the Emperor dispatched were the defensive garrison guarding the Western Pass. Though the newly appointed commander was a trusted man of the Emperor’s own choosing, the garrison’s previous commander had been a man of the Wang family.

When the Western Pass army marched to the gates of the capital, the newly appointed commander — while crossing a shallow ford on horseback — “accidentally” fell from his horse and struck his head against the rocks of the streambed head-first, and died without drawing another breath.

By the time the army entered in obedience to the imperial edict, their actual leader had already been replaced. They reported directly to Wang Yun’s residence.

What happened next, those in the northern lands only learned of afterward. Once the army entered the city, it surrounded the imperial palace from all sides. The imperial guards within first obeyed the Emperor’s command to hold fast, waiting only for the messengers sent out from the palace to summon additional reinforcements to come to his relief.

At the time, the Emperor dispatched three separate parties to slip out through the hidden passage used by the night-soil carts. But after going only a short distance, they were spotted by opposing forces many times their number and surrounded.

One among them, thanks to his background as a palace football player and his exceptional speed of foot, managed to bolt in a streak straight into the pleasure district’s alleyways, then wound through the labyrinthine lanes and slipped beneath a bridge over the inner city canal. Clinging there like a monkey to the underside of the bridge, he somehow evaded several sweeps of pursuit.

Of the three messengers dispatched, his was by far the farthest journey — he had been sent to carry word to the son-in-law Zhao Dong in the northern lands.

This was also, in truth, the Emperor’s last resort. If the Wang family’s seizure of the palace succeeded and all the surrounding troops proved unreliable, the only remaining hope was that the son-in-law Zhao Dong’s integrity of character would lead him to refuse to yield to Empress Wang’s malice and allow her to overturn the order of the realm.

On the third day after that messenger had disguised himself as a refugee and crawled out through a dog-hole in the wall, the inner gates of the Emperor’s palace were finally forced open by the battering of a great timber beam.

Empress Wang arrived in person, accompanied by Wang Yun and other Wang family military commanders, to enter the palace and “remonstrate” with the Emperor — urging him not to let himself be swayed by a scheming consort, and requesting that he revoke the decree naming the Ninth Prince as heir and follow proper succession law by designating the Sixth Prince as crown prince.

Emperor Wei Hui stared at the empress with whom he had maintained an estrangement behind a surface of harmony for the better part of a lifetime. He shook with fury from head to toe and demanded to know whether she had any idea what grievous crime she was committing.

Empress Wang, holding all the cards at this point, was unruffled and unhurried. She had Consort Qiong and her son dragged forward and forced to their knees, hair disheveled, before Emperor Wei Hui.

If the Emperor refused to write the edict formally installing the Sixth Prince Han Shen Zhi, she would have that scheming consort and her son executed right before his eyes.

Emperor Wei Hui understood clearly: if he did not write it, those two lives were forfeit without question. But if he did write it, those two lives were equally forfeit — and he himself would be discarded once he had served his purpose. The beast of burden killed once the grinding was done.

At his age, with the candle of his life already guttering, he no longer feared death as he once had in younger years.

To let this vicious woman succeed — to let the Sixth Prince, narrow-minded and vindictive to his very core, ascend the throne by treading upon his own flesh and blood — that was something he could not close his eyes to even in death.

At this thought, Emperor Wei Hui suddenly burst into a clear, untroubled laugh, and said to Empress Wang only: “I know your heart is black enough to kill anyone. Over these years, how many inside this palace and beyond have died by your hand? Since that is what you are, what does it matter to add a few more? Do you think my dragon throne is so easily sat upon?”

With these words, Emperor Wei Hui suddenly seized the imperial jade seal from the table and hurled it with all his force against the stone steps.

With that single blow, the seal face had cracked in four or five places.

Empress Wang had been completely unprepared for the Emperor to do such a thing and could only stare helplessly as he smashed the seal.

In truth, it would have been best if Emperor Wei Hui were willing to write the edict — legitimate and proper, it would have silenced the objections and arguments of the assembled officials. But if he refused to write it, the matter could still be managed: one simply found someone to write it for him, and said the Emperor was gravely ill and could only dictate while another transcribed.

But the imperial jade seal of the realm — that was truly not easily replicated. Its seal face bore not only the personal calligraphy of the Wei founding ancestors, but also an intricate, dense pattern of ornamentation. Even if a master craftsman were commissioned to forge an identical one, it would take upward of a month, and could not be produced in any short span.

That the Emperor had done this — even if she executed every favored consort in the entire palace, it would accomplish nothing.

But matters had come to this point, and those who had forced their way in had no path of retreat.

Empress Wang looked at the Emperor’s wild, glaring eyes fixed upon her, and a cold smile crossed her face. With a wave of her hand, she commanded her men to execute Consort Qiong and the Ninth Prince.

This seizure of the palace had been conducted under the banner of “eliminating the scheming consort and clearing the sovereign’s sight.” The heads of Consort Qiong and the Ninth Prince falling served also to remove the greatest threat to her own son’s path.

As for the Emperor’s other sons — those who had survived to adulthood were precious few. Either their mothers’ rank was too lowly, or they themselves were too feckless and incompetent to pose any threat to the newly styled King of Hengshan.

However, when her men had gone to seize Prince Rui’s household just now, they found neither the consort Fang Jinshu nor the infant still in his swaddling clothes anywhere in the entire residence.

The empress understood well that one must cut weeds out by the roots. Yet for now, the consort and the infant could not be found, and first the matter of securing the succession had to be settled.

Emperor Wei Hui watched with his own eyes as his beloved consort and cherished son were killed before him, tears streaming down his face without restraint. His very reason for refusing to pass the throne to the Sixth Prince had always been precisely this — that his mother was a woman of this monstrous character.

Yet for all his calculations, it had still come to this. How terrifying was the madness power wrought — that wedded spouses turned blades upon each other, that father and son of the same bloodline became bitter enemies.

When he was pushed into an inner chamber and the door bolted fast, and the empress’s parting words reached him — that if he refused to write an abdication edict she would deny him food — Emperor Wei Hui remained in silence.

He closed his eyes slowly and murmured to himself in a low voice: “My sons and daughters have all been failures. It is fortunate that I still have a son-in-law of fire and blood. Wang Quanxue — you wait.”

Having failed to obtain the Emperor’s edict, the empress declared publicly that the Emperor was gravely ill, and that Consort Qiong and the Ninth Prince had been executed on the spot by the imperial guards for plotting an attempt on the Emperor’s life.

From that point forward, all affairs of state were to be managed by the Sixth Prince. The empress’s meaning was simple: the Emperor’s death would be the moment her son legitimately inherited the throne.

Yet if, upon the occasion of a state funeral, Emperor Wei Hui bore marks of physical injury, or showed signs of having been poisoned, the stigma of patricide would follow forever.

Therefore the better approach was this: if the Emperor changed his mind and wrote an abdication edict transferring the throne to his son, so much the better. If he refused — he would simply be starved to death.

By that time, the Emperor’s skin-and-bones state would conveniently confirm the narrative of an illness beyond cure.

When a woman’s heart turned cruel, no man could match her. Empress Wang had made up her mind to see her son placed upon the throne.

Yet the capital remained under curfew for three consecutive days. Refugees and soldiers moved in chaotic disorder. Every official at court understood clearly what was happening.

There were also a few stubborn old ministers who could not put their concern for the Emperor aside, and gathered together to enter the palace hall, loudly demanding to be admitted to see the Emperor and confirm he was alive.

The Sixth Prince, following the empress’s instructions, dealt with them at this critical juncture with iron-handed severity — under no circumstances could these old men be allowed to build momentum.

As a result, several ministers who foolishly insisted on seeing the Emperor were dragged from the palace hall without ceremony.

One of them, an elder minister named Kong Lingfang, had long suffered from a heart ailment. In the excitement of the struggle and the rough handling, by the time he was thrown through the palace gates he had already gone rigid and stopped breathing.

Elder Kong had held considerable prestige at court, and beyond that had been known for his generosity in charitable works, having supported many a scholar of modest means — a man of the same cloth as Lord Li Guitian, esteemed as a great Confucian of the age.

Elder Kong’s violent death at the palace gates proved, astonishingly, even more shocking to the city than the Ninth Prince’s beheading. Within a short time, his students and followers were donning mourning clothes and weeping and crying out before the palace gates that Elder Kong had been unjustly killed.

The groundswell of grief and tribute for Elder Kong grew larger and larger, until at last it ignited a wave of popular fury.

Empress Wang had earlier instigated the Sixth Prince to stir the refugees into entering the capital to file accusations against the Ninth Prince. But were these displaced, destitute people some tool to be wielded at a prince’s pleasure?

Though the Ninth Prince was already dead, the people’s suffering went on unaddressed. The daily bowl of thin porridge that had previously kept them fed had vanished entirely without a trace, and people had even begun trying to drive them away.

Now word spread that a palace coup had apparently taken place in the capital, and that the upright, people-loving official Lord Kong had died under suspicious circumstances. This was like a lit firecracker flung into a powder magazine — the accumulated resentment of the people, seething for so long, exploded all at once.

Those who poured into the city in this surge of fury were not only vagrants and common folk — even commanders and soldiers aligned with the Ninth Prince’s faction joined the tide.

After all, with Consort Qiong and the Ninth Prince dead, it would be their turn to face reckoning next. If they did not rise up now, when the time came there would not even be an intact egg left beneath that overturned nest.

The scale and momentum of this upheaval was immense. In the histories, it would come to be called the Calamity of the Confucians.

Though the Sixth Prince hastily deployed troops to suppress it, many units, upon receiving the order, delayed their movements.

After all, the Sixth Prince’s edicts bore no imperial seal. Word had also spread that he had placed the Emperor under confinement and had just executed his own younger brother. Those below feared that by acting too early they would be drawn into the vortex of the succession struggle — and so every unit adopted a single golden principle: drag their feet. Better to arrive late than to arrive first.

The resulting delay turned the capital into a roiling chaos. The households of princes and nobility who had grown accustomed to pampered ease found themselves relentlessly looted by thieves and bandits mixed in among the refugees. Those with insufficient guards could only gather up their valuables, board their carriages, and flee.

Within a short time, what had been a city of tower upon tower and splendor built upon splendor was engulfed in the light of killing and fire.

The disorder escalated with every passing hour, until even members of the Wang family were urging Empress Wang to take the palace attendants and withdraw to the imperial villa five hundred li outside the capital to wait out the turmoil.

The empress had spent her entire life in the maneuvering and scheming of the inner palace. But confronted with this torrent of popular fury sweeping toward her like a flooding sea, she was caught entirely unprepared and had no idea what to do.

She could only turn on her son with blazing eyes and demand: “How have you let it come to this? How could you allow those refugees to run wild? Can you think of no way to clear them out?”

The Sixth Prince was beset on all sides and had not slept soundly in several days. Hearing his mother’s rebuke, he had nothing to say. He simply asked her to come up to the palace’s tall tower and look out over the city herself.

When Empress Wang ascended, she found great columns of dark smoke rising in every direction, and many of the mansions of princes and noble families appeared to be engulfed in roaring flames.

Only at this moment did Empress Wang’s legs begin to give way beneath her. Without the eunuch Fuhai holding her up, she would have crumpled to the ground. “How — how has it come to this?”

She had intended nothing more, at the outset, than to engineer a bloodless coup and see her son ascend smoothly to power. She had never intended to overturn the entire order of the Wei realm.

How had things come to such a pass — escalating to this uncontrollable, raging extreme?

At this point, with the capital already a place that could explode at any moment, Empress Wang finally thought of the imprisoned Emperor.

The Emperor, who had been forgotten for several days, had not in fact starved to death.

As it turned out, there was an old eunuch within the palace who recalled a kindness he had received from Emperor Wei Hui in his younger years and, moved by gratitude, had been quietly pushing a steamed bun and several pig bladders inflated with water through a cat-hole in the side of the hall these past few days — just enough to keep the Emperor from dying of thirst and hunger.

Yet a sovereign of an age, emperor of a dynasty — he had now been so ground down by his own wife and children that he was barely a recognizable human form.

When Empress Wang saw that he was still alive, she actually felt a wave of relief. In these turbulent times, keeping a breathing emperor in hand was as good as carrying a talisman against death.

And so Empress Wang and the Sixth Prince, taking the frail, barely-breathing Emperor with them, fled the capital in a panic along with the great families of the nobility.